Q&A Time!

Before getting elected, I got asked a lot of questions. Besides the surveys that I've filled out elsewhere online, here are some which have been asked face-to-face or in private message and have not been published. I am compiling a list here. The answers will deviate a bit in wording because my memory isn't exact, and, I have the luxury of hindsight to improve on my answers.

I meant to edit and publish this earlier (like, months earlier), but here we all are. Hopefully this gives the reader a glimpse into, well, me.

Q: If you are elected, at the end of your four-year term, what do you want to be remembered for?

A: One of the core Green principles is Sustainability. I'm a big fan of looking at the whole picture, taking the long view. We can't be making knee-jerk reactions -- we have to look carefully at the consequences of our actions not just on the right-now, but also on future generations.

We also have to take the time to drill down -- consider the effects of a decision by intersections of people it affects, build up proper mechanisms and processes to ensure a good decision today will continue to have good effects far into the future. At the very least, consider the potential of negative effects of the current decision and find ways to mitigate it.

Another thing I'd really like to try is to be transparent about how I'm making decisions. I have a blog and I hope to be writng about my thought processes down for folks to see -- I often think by writing. I'll probably make mistakes and some people will get disappointed, but I think that letting people see that this is happening, my reasoning behind my actions, will be helpful in some way.

What would you do to diffentiate/distance yourself from other parties?

(The orignal question was somewhat leading and my original answer was a bit more heated and specific, but here is the gist.)

My choices of action and my decisions are guided by my own core principles. I've come across candidates and electeds who happen to fly different colours than I, but with whom I share more than a few of these values and principles. I find that to be excellent. I'm sure I still have hidden cognitive biases, just like everyone else, which I will work to neutralise to the best of my abilities, but I'm not going to behave differently or deliberately put distance between myself and someone else with whom I work simply because of our party affiliations.

As humans, we are more alike than we are different. Finding similarities in shared experience and shared values and building on them is how good solutions come about.